By Monday she was already interviewing
clients for what would become one of the
world’s largest environmental class actions.
Hundreds of suits were filed around the
country and ultimately consolidated.

The judge in the case, Charles Breyer,
appointed Cabraser to head what observers
dubbed the “dream team” of 22 lawyers
on the vehicle owners’ steering committee.
“The judge knew Elizabeth could marshal
the talents of these people in each of the
areas they excelled at,” says firm partner

If anyone else was given the task, there

In her methodical way, Cabrasercommissioned surveys of VW owners,zeroing in on issues they cared about. “Shesought out everyone’s input, but ultimatelymade the decisions,” says plaintiff’sattorney Joseph Rice, who was on thecommittee and has worked with her onseveral class actions. “She knows how tomanage a group of type A personalities.”VW settled in 2016 for $14.7 billion, withmore than $10 billion for buybacks andowner compensation. It was another in along series of billion-dollar judgments forCabraser, who is adept at getting diversegroups of people to work together.

What was particularly unusual was
that civil lawyers worked in conjunction
with the EPA, DOJ, FTC and California
attorney general. “None of us were entirely
comfortable with the interaction between
public and private litigation, but the judge
told us to ‘get comfortable, because you are
going to interact,’” she says.

The key to orchestrating a complex casewith so many players, Cabraser says, is tobe sensitive to other people’s concerns andagendas. “You can’t call a state attorneygeneral on Saturday night and expect themto drop everything and talk about the case,”she says. “But I could call a fellow privateattorney, because we’re crazy that way.”Cabraser is renowned for both herencyclopedic knowledge of class actionlaw and her unique strategies. Recently, acolleague was seeking her advice becausehis firm was representing 40 peopleinvolved in a lawsuit, which he was havingtrouble getting the court to certify as aclass action. Cabraser suggested he tellthe defendant that he didn’t want a classaction and that the 40 cases could proceedindividually—a discombobulating tacticthat made the defendant want a classaction. “The defense is always trained tofight us, and Elizabeth turned it aroundon them,” Lieff says. “Her creativity justbewildered the opposing counsel.”She’s also dogged. During the Volkswagencase, Rice says Cabraser continually red-eyedit across the country to teach a law class or sitin on a drumming gig, only to turn right backaround on the next flight.

A hectic schedule is the norm. At the end
of each week, her law firm’s word-processing
department sends out a memo asking
which lawyers will need its services over the
weekend. “Elizabeth is always the first to
sign up, because she’s always working on
Saturday and Sunday,” Lieff says.

Cabraser is more comfortable in front ofa judge than a jury.

“I’m not David Boies or Melvin Belli,” shesays. “When it comes to cross-examinations,I tend to be a little too open and inquisitive.You have to go into a cross-exam lookingto box someone in, not find something out.But that’s not instinctive or intuitive with me,and some lawyers get there on a visceralWhat she does like is taking cases apartand putting them together again. It’s atrait that appeared early. Her father, whoraced stockcars on weekends, insisted allhis children learn basic mechanical skills.As a teen, Cabraser made money by fixingjunk cars and selling them.

Her dad was also a union organizer.
Activism was almost her birthright: “I
assume Democrat was listed on my birth
certificate.” In 1967, at age 14, she was
stirred while accompanying her parents to
a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

She went to UC Berkeley on a NationalMerit Scholarship to study physics, but itseemed like the grants were for defense-related work to support the Vietnam Warrather than her preferred pure science,which curtailed that aspiration.

While attending Berkeley, Cabraser was
swept up by police while at a protest, and
bused to Santa Rita Jail. After standing
in line to use the phone, she called her
mother, who declined to bail her out for the
weekend. Her parents didn’t mind that she
had been arrested. “They wanted me to
understand that civil disobedience wasn’t
a lark, and if I stood up for something, it
should be something that mattered. That’s
part of the deal, and I’ve never forgotten it.
There’s a reason Dr. King’s [missive] is called
Letter from Birmingham Jail."

After graduating in 1975, she considered
medical school, but was weak from dealing
with medical issues of her own. By the time
she was diagnosed with an easily treatable
auto-immune syndrome, she was already
at UC Berkeley School of Law. “I naively
thought law school would be more relaxing
than medical school,” she says.

She got a work-study job at the Alameda
County Law Library, and was certain her
future was as a law librarian. “I had never
been a big talker or writer, so I figured being a
librarian would be perfect,” she says. “I could
just help people and be around a lot of books,

which I thought would be seventh heaven.”Her plan was derailed when she putup an index card on the bulletin board atthe library offering legal services for $5 anhour. Robert Lieff contacted her, asking herto prepare a brief that was due in the 9thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the next day.He hired her as a law clerk during her lastsemester, then she stayed on as a lawyer.Lieff was winding up a few cases inpreparation for retiring so that he couldtend his wine vineyards. But people keptcoming into the firm with interesting cases,Cabraser says, and she would ask him if theycould do “just one more.” That was 38 yearsago, and Lieff hasn’t managed to retire yet.

“Putting up that index card essentially
started my legal career and ended my job
search,” she says. “I don’t dislike change, but I
was lucky to fall into a career and relationship
that worked for me,” she says. The 36-year-
strong relationship is with Marguerite
Longtin; they have two grown children.

AT LIEFF CABRASER HEIMANN &BERNSTEIN, Cabraser became a namepartner in three years. The firm embracedclass actions. “In the 1970s, class actions“Every so oftenyou have a chanceto do a repair job,either preventing aharm or restoringhealth or lives,rather thanjust givingpeople moneyafter the fact.”